The Power

(The following was written in installments between February 2010 and December 2011.)

"Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble." --Joseph Campbell

I know there are people out there who have never picked up a tall black book called The Power of Myth. It is one long conversation between the quintessential intelligent journalist, Bill Moyers, and the person who knows more about more kinds of Mythology than anyone ever, Joseph Campbell.

The book serves to sum up Campbell's life's work in easily digestible slices of truth, magic and history. The message of the book is often over-distilled down to his mantra of 'Follow Your Bliss,' but that ain't even the ever-halving half of it.

Recently, after reading the book cover to cover again, I was vividly reminded of my first go-round with the Power. It dug deep into me and made some real changes in the deep fabric of the titanium overcoat that separates and protects me from the other beings on the top level of the food chain/slash "most dangerous predator list." Which, at the present time, takes the form of all my old buddies, Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

I have prattled on before about how the Earth is Gaia, the living, sentient being. Campbell explains exactly how -- or at least in which manner -- humanity developed from "part" of Terra to "master" of the entire crust of the planet (and we would probably go ahead and parcel out various currents of mantle magma if we can just figure out how to run our Ipods off it). We own and want and need and get and get and get. We've woven fact with myth and Myth with lying. The evil that underlies our consumer culture is the Guardian at the Gate of Wisdom. The constant bombardment of our eyes, and not to mention our children (and especially during this season of Xmas with a capital X), with demands that we buy that which we not only do not need, but just as likely will simply store on a shelf until some future day when the item is determined to not be box-worthy in the next move on to somewhere better with better schools and more convenient grocery mega-malls manned by struggling workers willing and able to make the lowest living wage possible and providing service to match.

But (as is wont to occur), I digress.

Part of what I learned from Dr. Campbell is that our disconnect from the planet is our biggest weakness in body and soul. Our placement of Deity itself in the Sky, away from us, where we have to stretch and strive and push push push yourself towards something you will never reach... I bet it tastes like carrots when you finally get it.

I don't even like carrots.

I like the big fat lady with her big ol' boobies that they found all over the place from a time when Homo Sape was not obsessed with striving toward the removed, but instead focused on being part of the seasons and the cycles and the freakin' Nature itself. Instead we have paved it over to put up the proverbial parking lot.

Please read the next line in my most non-zealotous voice,... I think you would enjoy reading The Power of Myth, it's good.

I have recently also discovered a perfect film of the real history of everything. It is on PBS stations right now, but they are able to make it last two hours with all their please pleas. I know, we gotta have PBS at least, give 'em some money, but the show that happens in between is the game changer.

Journey of the Universe tells more in one hour about who we are and where we came from than any hour you've ever spent. It weaves Campbell with Newton with Einstein and everything else. Check your local listings, it's on right now.

But don't get too jazzed up about being so far along the path, it's practically 2012 anyway. If the Mayans are right, it doesn't make any difference one way or the other....

Of course, if they miss on this one, I plan to keep listening for Gaia to tell me what to do next.

Peace.

In the Belly of the Black-Winged Bird

Lay me down in a field of flame and heather
Render up my body

into the burning heart of God

in the belly of a black-winged bird

--Counting Crows

Now that the Super Bowl is over, and football is put away in the Man Closet for another sad season, I can reflect... upon the bittersweet agony that is being an Atlanta Falcons fan.

The number one seed. Big clutch wins all season. In the spotlight? The fearsome #6 seed come to town, annnnd....Good night. The Packers were the better team that night, and indeed the best team in the league,... but still.

It's not like I should be surprised.

I have loved the Atlanta Falcons for almost as long as I have loved football. Hold your applause. Before the tale of star-crossed love begins, I must first disclose a brief and meaningless fling I had with "America's Team" of the Bold Blue Star. The Cowboys were 9-1, looking every bit as good as the defending champion, and dreaded, Steelers. The Cowboys were the reigning champs of the NFC, ultimately 21-17 victims of the Steelers in X, but EVERYbody's favorite team had come back strong in '76 and had barely been chinked on their run to almost Super Bowl XI.

Anyway, the larger-than-life Cowboys came to Atlanta and Dad got us tickets to the game, on (what a little research shows) was November 21, 1976. Our nation had turned 200, I had turned six, and the Falcons had turned stomachs for a decade on their way to missing the playoffs in every single year of their miserable decade of existence.

The Pre-Dirty Dirty Birds came in at 3-7, Dallas came out and quickly went up 7 on a TD run by one of the quintessential Cowboy Cowboys: Scott Laidlaw. (How much more Cowboy could you get? Well, maybe they'll trade for Colt McCoy.)

It was still 7-0 at the half, but the diminutive Efren Herrera (I'm sorry to digress again, but Efren would later become momentarily famous for wrapping his essentially circular Latin American frame around a 20 yard pass on a fake field goal that embarrassed the Falcons on Monday Night Football) added three in the third. 10-0 Dallas.

Somehow, by some sort of miracle, Atlanta put up a field goal early in the fourth. The dribble of life that it gave the crowd kept us from leaving to beat the half-full (well, probably half-empty) stadium traffic. I remember the outcome of the rest of the quarter, but I had to consult the stats for how it happened exactly. The most thoroughly un-Cowboy name on the field had to be Mike Esposito, who is remembered in Falcon mythology as 'that guy who scored against the Cowboys that time,' ran in from 35 out to tie the game. With just minutes left, the back-up to Steve Bartkowski's back-up (Mike Moroski), Third-string QB Scott Hunter plunged it in from a yard out and the Falcons held on to give Dallas its second loss of the year. The win also propelled the Falcons on to a 4-10 record and another solid legacy of crap that would stretch only two more seasons.

But I was in.

That day that we sat the Cowboys down in the big, blue round edifice of mediocrity that was Atlanta-Fulton County, I made a decision. I was going for the home team, for Dad's team, and for football on the grand scale. I took down my Cowboys pennant, and replaced it with a bright red Falcons pennant. I started collecting football cards, I had all my friends getting them, we would trade and try to put teams together. I added other hard-luck teams to my stable as they made little runs at the big boys, the Chargers, the Cardinals; expansion franchises in Seattle and Tampa. I read magazines and cut out headlines and glued them into geeky little scrapbooks. But I dressed, slept and breathed Falcons as they finally finished the season at .500 in '77, but my passion was completely out of control by the time they scraped into the playoffs as a wild card in '78. They had three divisions and two wild cards then, we played the NFC East runner up Eagles in Atlanta and came from behind in the last two minutes to push on to Dallas the following week. (That entire game is on You Tube) And then, oh damn you Dallas! Why do you treat me this way? The Falcons fell to the eventual Super Bowl losers, and little solace came from the Cowboys' inability to rise to meet the Steelers yet again in XIII. Those Cowboys fell from the top of my list to the very bottom in two years' time, and they didn't help their cause any when the knocked the Falcons out of the playoffs the next time they made it too, but that's another story -- a 'Too Tall Tale' if you will.

So, that's how this year is better than those first few flirtations with fabulousness so many years ago. At least the Packers were kind enough to beat the Steelers (in the house of the Cowboys) after tromping all over my poor, poor heart. And we're still a young team, just missing a couple pieces, and various other cliche's notwithstanding, we are on a roll. There is a Super Bowl out there for us in the next three years at the most. And when that glorious day comes, we will erase our lingering Atlanta sports demons, those that still hung under the glorious eaves of A-FC Stadium even after Glavine took Game 6 against the Indians, those spectres of Bartkowski and Bubba Bean and even stupid old Jeff George and the Vick mess, can all just float away. It's been 45 years. It just has to happen soon.

This is not a political article

I was driving down 421 the other evening, ipod wailing, sunroof open and sunshine pouring in, and I thought, what if every American, upon reaching 25 years of age, received $50,000 cash from the U.S. Government?

I think of it as some sort of catapult program. The government would expect the money to be spent on establishing a solid foundation for a young adult: modest home, solid transportation, all the proper insurance, and the benefits would be even more far-reaching than that.

The way you qualify for your "pre-heritance" is by staying out of trouble up to that point. For every run-in with authority, you would lose a portion of the money. Rather than lock a kid up for his first public intoxication charge, dock him a grand out of his fifty. Let him earn it back with appropriate behavior.

We are not doing a great job in our country of teaching children right from wrong. There is a lack of structure and discipline in far too many children's lives. We have to put something in place to motivate children extrinsically. As much as I hate it, nothing does that better than money. It's a fact of life, and particularly of American life. My boys say "Money can't buy me love," but they also warn you of the power of the "TaxMan." Children in our culture equate money with freedom -- which is a grand commodity. If they know they will get at least a shot, a boost, they will strive to do everything necessary to reach the goal.

Graduating high school gets you a bonus. Graduate college, roll into the courthouse and pick up your $75,000 check. The possibilities are limitless, but it should be simple. I would love to see a pilot project in one of the states. I guarantee you, teen crime would go down. Bring them in to sign up for the program. They can come in when they are twelve, a rite of passage into adolescence. You sign a paper that says: "I intend to receive my 25 Catapult payment from Uncle Sam. I understand that this is a privilege, not a right, and that I could lose portions of the payment for inappropriate behavior. Amen." Then, you get $100 on the spot. Who wouldn't sign up?

OK, obviously, I hear the realist in the corner, "Where will the money come from Glenn?"

I'm probably not the first one to come up with this funding plan, but couldn't we build one less airplane or boat for a year or two, and just redirect that money from whichever millionaire was going to get it, if it cuts the crime rate, ups high school and college graduation, and infuses a constant stream of money into the economy? I'm being naive I'm sure. It just seems to have some good points.

And the IRS can start collecting it back with the 25 year olds first paycheck. Just start pulling 25 percent out until half of it has come back to the government. That's fair. Steady stream of income for Uncle Sam again.

I don't know, it makes sense to me. I'm thinking of putting it into play at my school. How about I offer a $2,000 college scholarship to students that stay through eighth grade and then go on through high school and get accepted to a college. Then they come back to me and claim their scholarship. Same principle. Maybe I'll be the pilot. "Over Unger, Unger, Dunn..."

This is probably an influence of near socialist England still lingering on me from my three months there. This ol' worn out US of A probably can't afford it. We'd rather just keep letting our 19 year old kids keep gunning each other down in the street, losing everything because they have nothing to live for anyway. There has to be a better idea. I'm just trying to get the ball rolling.

Grizdawg Out.

The Mark of Demian

The title character in Herman Hesse's first popular novel, released in 1919, is not the narrator. The story is told by the thoroughly imperfect young Sinclair, who stumbles and questions his way through life, occasionally -- and thankfully for him -- along the same path with the tall boy named Max Demian.

Demian convinces Sinclair early in their intertwined lives that many within the human population are descended from the original bad boy, none other than Cain himself. He is certain that he is among the company, and is pretty sure Sinclair bears 'The Mark' as well.

Somewhere along the course of their life-long conversation, Demian shares the following, and I remember how much it changed me when I first read it 20 years ago, so I'm just gonna let the Hermanator hold the wheel while I light up the italics ...

"We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd. They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature's determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same. For them mankind--which they loved as much as we did--was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren't written down anywhere."

I'm not going to try to presume to be able to say it any better than that.

Where is there a better description of the people who are here to make the world better? It just happens that Hesse believed that the Children of Cain got a bad rap in the original Comedown, and in this particular story he went ahead and let them be the good guys for a change.

With that aside, where do you fall, or should I say 'Fall?'

"A distant future to which we are all journeying..." Hell yeah, Double-H.

I have one more tidbit for you about Herman Hesse. According to the About the Author at the back of Demian, Hesse had a rough couple years before he wrote this first of many great books. He spent a year in a 'sanitorium' and underwent psychoanalysis. With whom you might ask? None other than Mr. Synchronicity himself, Carl Jung. They do say she's a small world don't they?

They oughta sell tickets.

Elmer Fudd's Magic Helmet

December 1 for the last post? Wow. Several have been started, I assure you. They just seem to be hitting the cutting room floor most of the time. Evidently, this one survived.

I watched a show on the Science Channel called 'Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman,' (as though Morgan Freeman's vast knowledge of Wormhole theory was just assumed.) Anyway, they were talking about my favorite topic on this one: Religion.

The segment I saw involved The God Helmet.

Apparently, this fellow can concentrate energy on a specific area of the head/brain and stimulate a religious experience. Fast forward to the heavy part, if this sensation is real -- which it certainly seemed to be to the girl in the video -- does it mean that we conjure up a supernatural entity from inside our head, OR does the magnet thing fire up our transmitter from which we "Tap In" to the universal or spiritual? Wow again.

I have had, over the course of my life, what I consider to be religious experiences. I don't feel the need to go into the details, but the connections were -- to me -- significant enough to provide a certain measure of comfort and assurance about a greater level of existence beyond this one. I saw and, more importantly I believe, felt something more. More than once. Now, this God Helmet has got me wondering whether I just turned on the light switch in the right part of my brain.

What if Moses or Muhammad just stimulated the right part of their brain? John the Baptist? Joan of Arc? Jesus? Black Elk? The list goes on and on.

Whatever is going on in our brains when we think or feel or believe anything, is complicated. I don't have time (or is it the brain) to try and understand the science any deeper than to say that I believe itty bits of goo called neurotransmitters are passed across a non-touching junction called a synapse to get information from storage to working memory. These info bits are flying together, like Zeus' lightning bolts, from all over your brain to meet up in a place where they can be Vulcanized together into a genuinely thinkable thought.

The girl in the video believed that there was a presence in the room with her. Either she or the researcher decided to call it a supernatural presence that was conjured through that spot in her brain. It could just as easily be called a hallucination caused by that motorcycle helmet on her head. And what is a vision if not a hallucination so real that it is internally believed to Be Real.

The difference is that internal thing. In my experience, it was a feeling throughout my body and soul. I think it was more than the brain.

But how would I know?

That's where the Faith comes in.

Now you're going to tell me that if you mash a different button on the God Helmet, you can turn off the Faith too.

That would be great, thanks. Could you let me know before I Tivo it?

I don't think I'm going to let the helmet bother me too much more. I'm sure that plenty of people will worry about it for me. I'm going to keep an eye out for that helmet Elmer wore when he actually Killed the Wabbit, that thing looks just as powerful and twice as fashionable.

PJ

I find myself in that enviable position of having just enough knowledge of a topic to expound for about 9 to 13 paragraphs without completely losing my train of thought.

It was in the Avery Journal publishing days that I came upon one of the strangest little men I've ever met. 'Georgia' Jimmy Garnett was like a character in a dream -- just barely above cartoon, but not quite believable in the role of adult homo sapiens.

He wrote sports. I don't want to give too much away so's not to embarrass him, but he wrote sports and he was absolutely obsessed with one aspect of collegiate athletics. One bastion of upright society, of sportsmanship and gamesmanship, of dignity, and this hallowed ground was none other than my beloved University of Georgia. He lived and he breathed Georgia Bulldog football. He could, and often did, quote scripture and verse from Lewis Grizzard books, and could tell you Vince Dooley's record against Auburn in night games where the Tigers' quarterback topped 300 yards passing. It was damn near eerie.

His stature simply added to the picture. He was 5-4 if he was in thick sole tennys. Typically black. He proudly wore the sacred Red and Black in almost every form -- from slacks to polo to windbreaker and back -- but question him about his days in the Classic City, and the subject was quickly changed. Jimmy's ties to the Dawgs were of the lifelong and sportscentered variety. He watched Herschel go over the top in the 1980 National Championship game and was hooked. The restrictions of out-of-state tuition conspired to keep Jimmy from ever having long discussions on Civil War history in LeConte Hall or puking out the Reed dorm windows, no, Jimmy stayed home in the mountains and felt his blood grow Redder from afar.

He was only functionally literate but he could crank out a sports story, which brings me to my actual point. In 1999, Georgia Jimmy was constantly writing stories about Division I-AA football. It was mostly understandable for me due to the prominence of the mighty Appalachian State Mountaineers here in Boone, and their influence stretched into neighboring Avery County where we were making the newspaper. But his stories weren't about Appalachian in those distant pre-Michigan upset days, his stories were about the hated Southern Conference rivals, the Georgia Southern Eagles.

Mind you, they were the dominant team and once again I-AA champs, but the reason Jimmy was writing about them was their coach....former Avery County High School coach....wait for it, Paul Johnson. (If you live under a rock or lack an adam's apple, or are one of the three people that didn't graduate with me that's reading this, the name Paul Johnson will become more significant momentarily.)

Jimmy had grown up with Paul Johnson, and he was now the coach of the National Champions (of I-AA). He was proud of him and wanted everybody to know that this particular 'local boy done good' story made it out.

So, in the end, my days with Jimmy were somewhat short. Politics and the dramas of the countryside conspired against our odd little friendship. I still have a cup he gave me from a Dawgs game, and I never did give that magazine with the caricature of Lewis riding Uga on the front, but I did give him a real blood link to Georgia. But here we are, lo these many years later, both Jimmy and I are probably moving horizontally, but the career of the aforementioned Paul Johnson has continued to blossom.

I know Jimmy was proud when Johnson was enlisted by the United States of America to direct its gridiron operations at the Naval Academy. They were terrible when he got there. He took them straight to a bowl and then another couple. He was soon noticed by a team struggling at the next level of Division I football, in Georgia ... no, it couldn't be...

As Georgia Jimmy looked on ready to write the next chapter for the friends and family back in Avery County, and I watched from Boone with something approaching genuine interest, Paul Johnson was hired to coach the godforsaken Nerds on North Avenue, the Good Ol' Fashioned Hated Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

Gal-dangit. And I was just starting to like him.

Now, of course this brings us all the way to this very day, three very days since the supposedly overmatched, helplessly undercoached Georgia Bulldogs laid a whuppin' on said Jackets. Mr. Johnson, for the first time, shared his true feelings about the outcome, it was the first quotes of his I could remember reading outside of a Jimmy article. "Guy giving you a hard time and you get tired of it," said PJ on the radio, "Punch him in the face." ...Wow.

Before we even start the great Bow-Up of 2009, I got to share something with the soldiers of the Slightly Off Mustard - and sometimes Gold - Nation, as my buddy SteveO said, better remember that "you" go to Tech and the "guy" is a farmboy from Athens that will beat you to death if you punch him in the face. So, just bear it in mind before you go all Avery County Killbilly on anyone.

Now, with that said, I want to offer all my best to badass Paul Johnson and his efforts to toughen up what was admittedly, with no offense to the ladies, a very girly team. Yes, they have some fellows that can run fast (though their hands appear a bit suspect), and PJ has thrown together a very complex and difficult-to-slow offense. I even think they have a good shot at topping Clemson and then may even get lucky in the Orange Bowl. Now with THAT said, let's move on to address your conception of the GA-GA Tech rivalry, Paul.

Y'all got us last year, we popped you back this year. See you next Thanksgiving. We've owned you for the better part of my waking life with the exception of that spectacular four year run y'all had at the turn of this century. PJ, you are gonna have to string a few together before you talk too big over Coach Richt, and our mascot is about three hundred and seventy times cooler dead than your team's bug or its car. Why do you have an extra mascot anyway, in case one breaks down on 4th and 10? Trust me, I hope it's a long and distinguished rivalry between Coaches Richt and Johnson. I think over time, Georgia Jimmy's boyhood friend and idol, Coach Paul Johnson, might just get what Good Old Fashioned Hate is all about.

Y'all have a good holiday, and if any of you would presume to give me a Christmas present, I direct you to my school's webpage. There is a PayPal link there that you could use to make a little donation to our Bus fundraising campaign. Thanks, Grizdawg out.

Gaia

I feel like the piece I typed in here called Mother Nature's Stepson was probably the best thing I've written over the past year or five, and in re-reading it I felt a touch 'spired to do a little rhyme-writin'...

I met this hippie chick named Gaia,

She was pretty, soft and cool

Perfect eyes as blue as oceans

Sparkling waves and tidal pools

But in the hills they turned to emeralds

In the snow they turned to ice

In the desert out in Utah once

I learned of the sacrifice

Seems that Gaia's touched with poison

She's been tasting for a while

It started getting pretty bad

'Cross these last two hundred miles

Every man that's come to Gaia

With his pockets full of lies

Has left her scarred and scared and punctured

And oftentimes barely alive

Every cheap and lazy vulture,

Every starving, greedy crow

They all go chasing after Gaia

And she's too nice to just say no.

So they take another piece away

And they feed upon her love

They will hold her skin above the flame

Until the day she says 'Enough.'

I can see it in her sparkle

I can feel it on her skin

Gaia won't take it forever

She'll be standing at the end

So I'm asking her to trust me

Maybe join me for a walk

That's just a parrot on my shoulder

That I'm trying to teach to talk

So he can tell us 'bout the jungle

And the smoke that's in the East

And the fight against the lurking

creeping

Fire-breathing Beast

I sound like Gaia when I say that

It's always this or that new cause

Everything's so personal

Who knew we had so many flaws?

But I just can't live without her

I can feel her everywhere

In the grass beside the creek out back

And in my little girl's long hair

See Gaia's not the marrying type

She simply too direct

But if you ever get to dance with her

Please show her some respect

Keep a proper distance

Let her get to know you first

See Gaia needs to feel your warmth

And not to be immersed

In your greedy exploitations

In your mining for the power

Behave yourself with dignity

And get her home at a decent hour

And tell her that I asked about her

I think I'll go and see her soon

The sun is rising over Gaia

But Gaia's dancing with the Moon.

--GG, 7/9/09